JOHN P. BUCKLEY.
A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS
What if there were no letters and no books? Think what your state would be in a situation like that! Think what it would be to know nothing, for example, of the way in which American independence had been won, and the federal republic of the United States constructed; nothing of Bunker Hill; nothing of George Washington; except the little, half true and half mistaken, that your fathers could remember, of what their fathers had repeated, of what their fathers had told to them. Think what it would be to have nothing but shadowy traditions of the voyage of Columbus, of the coming of the Mayflower pilgrims, and of all the planting of life in the New World from Old World stocks, like Greek legends of the Argonauts and of the Heraclidae! Think what it would be to know no more of the origins of the English people, their rise and their growth in greatness, than the Romans knew of their Latin beginnings; and to know no more of Rome herself than we might guess from the ruins she has left! Think what it would be to have the whole story of Athens and Greece dropped out of our knowledge, and to be unaware that Marathon was ever fought, or that one like Socrates had ever lived! Think what it would be to have no line from Homer, no thought from Plato, no message from Isaiah, no Sermon on the Mount, nor any parable from the lips of Jesus!
Can you imagine a world intellectually famine-smitten like that—a bookless world—and not shrink with horror from the thought of being condemned to it?
Yet the men and women who take nothing from letters and books are choosing to live as though mankind did actually wallow in the awful darkness of that state from which writing and books have rescued us. For them, it is as if no ship had ever come from the far shores of old Time where their ancestry dwelt; and the interest of existence to them is huddled in the petty space of their own few years, between walls of mist which thicken as impenetrably behind them as before. How can life be worth living on such terms as that? How can man or woman be content with so little, when so much is offered?
J. N. LARNED.
BOOKLESS HOMES
The bookless homes of the well-to-do people are familiar to all. Inside those walls no books are to be found but a few gift books, chosen for their bindings rather than their contents, and perhaps others which some agent has pressed upon them. What can be done to stimulate reading in these homes? Ten-cent magazines and cheap stories are devoured by mother and daughters to the destruction of sane thoughts and connected ideas. The man of the house each day reads his newspaper, containing accounts of crimes, accidents and the funny paper. Happily, it also contains articles of travel, invention and discovery, otherwise his brain would be weakened.
Young people come from these bookless homes to college each year, showing great confusion of ideas, vacuity of mind and utter lack of information. They need us, need libraries, need the force of the state to help them. Ninety-four per cent of our young people never get into college. Ninety per cent, it is said, never go to school after they have passed the age of fourteen years.
The contribution of the library is to elevate the standard of the town. Books depicting noble, earnest, well-meaning lives will cause the social standard to progress, and other standards with it.